Archive forMarch, 2010

Social game developer and publisher Playdom has acquired Three Melons, an Argentinian online game developer. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

In additions to numerous casual games, Three Melons has been working on Bola, an online soccer game with over 145,000 daily active Facebook users, and a Unity-based casual MMO . A year ago it picked up $600,000 in seed funding to develop those projects–apparently enough to make it appealing as Playdom looks to expand internationally. Three Melons currently has a 45-person studio, though the company says it will expand dramatically to keep up with Playdom's project schedule over the next year.

"We are thrilled to join forces with Playdom," said Mariano Suarez Battan, CEO of Three Melons. "The company has positioned itself for success in 2010 and we look forward to working as a team to deliver on that goal."

Hangout Industries, the company behind Facebook game Fashion City, has raised $2 million in equity from its existing backers. It has previously raised $6 million from Highland Capital Partners and Polaris Venture Partners in March 2007 and another $4 million last June.

Today Linden Lab is officially announcing four updates to Second Life aimed at making the "first hour" experience more appealing for new, mainstream users. Among the additions are the previously discussed Viewer 2, which, among other things, simplifies the user experience, and Shared Media, which allows users to integrate more traditional Web content into Second Life.

According to a Linden rep, just while Viewer 2 has been in public beta, already 10% of Second Life users have already begun using the new client regularly. Likewise, Linden's list of Shared Media applications seems to be growing quickly.

Today Linden Lab is officially announcing four updates to Second Life aimed at making the "first hour" experience more appealing for new, mainstream users. Among the additions are the previously discussed Viewer 2, which, among other things, simplifies the user experience, and Shared Media, which allows users to integrate more traditional Web content into Second Life.

According to a Linden rep, just while Viewer 2 has been in public beta, already 10% of Second Life users have already begun using the new client regularly. Likewise, Linden's list of Shared Media applications seems to be growing quickly.

Today the mobile social gaming platform Scoreloop announced the launch of a new set of monetization tools for its Scoreloop SDK. The new tools will allow every Scoreloop game to feature its own in-game virtual currency and give developers the technology to quickly build virtual goods storefronts inside their apps. Scoreloop CEO Marc Gumpinger says the new tools are intended to make the Scoreloop SDK more useful to developers of freemium games.